Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800 (30 page)

BOOK: Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800
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129
The Iraqi poet Hasan ibn ʿAbd al-Ba
qi
(d. 1745/6), who was reputed to be an aesthete and a wine-drinker, addressed a poem containing the following lines to the cousin of his patron, praising him while playfully suggesting that he did not have what it takes to become a poet:
You have not drunk wine, nor seized the day, nor loved passionately. Only the rake composes poetry who, when the times permit, sins.
130
 
The number of prominent poets in the early Ottoman Arab East who were said to love beauty or featured in anecdotes involving pederastic attraction is striking. A list of the poets of whom this is true is almost identical to the list of the most prominent Egyptian, West Arabian, Syrian, and Iraqi poets of the period 1500-1800: Mamayah al-Ru
mi
, Ahmad al-ʿIna
ya
ti
, Darwi
sh al-T
a
lawi
, Isma
ʿi
l al-H
ija
zi
(sixteenth century); Abu

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